


we're both of us beneath our love

by anneweaver



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Pre-Comeback, angsty dancing, dwp: dancing without plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 04:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15234903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneweaver/pseuds/anneweaver
Summary: For three minutes it’s just Tessa and Scott, two people who dance together, two people who have only ever shared their love for the dance, the ice, and each other. Two people who, when it’s just the two of them on the ice, can forget the rest of the world.Except they’re not on the ice, and the song ends as fast as it started, and they’re left avoiding each other’s gaze in the middle of the dancefloor.





	we're both of us beneath our love

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Dance Me to the End of Love by The Civil Wars

She’s been dancing on and off for a few hours, the champagne making her feel pleasantly buzzed and careless and her heels forgotten somewhere around her table, when she feels his warm hand settling possessively on her hip. His fingers dig at her flesh, his arm sliding around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder, and she freezes for a moment before falling into step with his swaying. Her current dance partner—a man she had never seen before until two minutes ago, when he was suddenly dancing with her—seems to stare at the scene for a moment before shaking his head, deciding she isn’t worth the hassle, and dancing away to find a new partner.

“You look good,” he whispers, his lips dangerously close to her neck. His voice is low and so are his hands when in a quick, fluid movement, he turns her around to face him, never stopping the sway he’d been doing to keep the pretense of dancing. 

She is exhausted. She hates the way her body reacts to his so naturally, even when she’s mad at him, and she hates how it always feels like a dance when he’s around her, even if they’re barely talking. 

Dancing is, after all, how they communicate. 

He’s slowly running a hand down her arm in a move that, she knows, is him trying to sneakily hold her hand, and for a moment she’s almost lost in the way her flesh reacts to his touch; instead, she shakes her head and takes a quick step back, breaking all contact between their bodies, before asking, “Where’s Kaitlyn?”

His eyes darken almost imperceptibly, but she immediately  _ knows.  _ “Her hotel room,” he mutters, and she huffs bitterly before turning to walk away.

He quickly reaches for her waist again and pulls himself closer to her body, tugging her back flush against him, her shoulder blades sharp against his chest. His mouth is, once again, too close to her neck, and she can feel his hot breath on her skin when he asks “Who was that?” in a voice that sounds almost jealous, completely different than it was just a moment ago when talking about his girlfriend. 

She can’t help the bitter laugh that escapes her lips.

“How dare you,” she spits and pushes him away, making him take a surprised step back and his arms falling limp at his sides. “Go back to your girlfriend, Scott.”

She barely manages to take one step before he’s reaching for her hand and twirling her, and her body follows automatically, falling in-sync with him even if her mind is begging her not to; she bumps against his chest with a thud and then his hands are on her hips and he’s leading a dance she never asked for, whispering  _ onetwothreefour _ in her ear as though she’s never danced before. 

“My girlfriend doesn’t want me there,” he whispers after a moment, hips still swaying, feet moving to the beat. She can almost feel the angry lump in her throat threatening to burst. Instead, she places both hands on his chest and digs her nails at his pecs through his shirt, as hard as she possibly can.

“So you settled for the second best option, huh?” she asks, and her voice breaks in the middle of the sentence, half angry and half sad. He tries to pull her even closer but she resists. 

“I have never  _ settled _ for you, Tess,” he says, and she digs her nails even further, in a way that’s almost unbearable painful, and he figures he deserves it, after all he’s done to her, so he doesn’t try to resist it. “You have never been the second best. Ever. You have to know that.”

“Yeah, well,” she presses her palms flat against his chest for a moment, then turns around and presses her back against him, arms linking behind his neck, his hands creeping up to settle on her ribs, “doesn’t really feel like that.” 

He doesn’t say anything, only holds her in place as they sway to the rhythm of the song. He moves in an apologetic manner, his movements calculated and dry like he does only after he’s done something he  _ knows _ will piss her off, and she moves in a complacent way at first, only moving as much as absolutely necessary and willing the song to be over. By the end of the song, he can feel her finally losing herself to the beat and to the feeling of his body pressed against hers, his breath on her neck, his fingers ghosting over her solar plexus and suspiciously close to her chest, and he relaxes around her, pressing his lips to her shoulder. 

It feels like forever before the song is over and then something that sounds like tango starts playing; she turns around, hair flying around her face, and gives him a look that he’s seen countless times before, though never in a crowded club, never when their clothes are still on. His eyes darken and he extends a hand that she takes immediately before he aggressively tugs her closer and she leans in, hiking her leg up to settle at his hip. His hand grips her thigh, his finger tips digging into her flesh, and he dips her, slowly, his face dangerously close to the valley between her breasts, where he can see the way her skin is flushed all the way up to her neck. 

He spins her gently, her back arched against his hand, as though he didn’t trust himself with her body, as though  _ she  _ didn’t trust him wholly with her body—and maybe she didn’t, not completely, not anymore, but when it came to dancing she trusted him completely and without hesitation.

If anything else failed, they could always rely on their dancing.

He brings her back up, taking his sweet time slowly running his hand up her spine before settling at the base of her neck, his fingers tickling at the sensitive spot right below her neckline, at the same time he brings his forehead to rest against hers. Their eyes meet and he lets go of her thigh, leaving her free to move her leg back at the same time he moves his own leg forth, pausing for a moment to take a deep breath and losing themselves to the dance—ignoring the people around them and the noise and the anger, only focused on each other’s bodies and the music resonating deep in their bones.

The dance is fast enough for the people around them to move and give them their space, the spins and steps and dips too complex for anybody to understand and too intimate for anyone to even try, but it’s exactly what they need at the moment and so they let themselves be. Their legs intertwined as their hips move to the beat, their fingers tangled together as they break apart and pull each other close again, their heavy breaths mingling with each other’s every time their faces inch together; it’s the most in sync they’ve been in months, their bodies once again an extension of each other, and for three minutes there is no painful history between them. For three minutes it’s just Tessa and Scott, two people who dance together, two people who have only ever shared their love for the dance, the ice, and each other. Two people who, when it’s just the two of them on the ice, can forget the rest of the world.

Except they’re not on the ice, and the song ends as fast as it started, and they’re left avoiding each other’s gaze in the middle of the dancefloor.

The people around them resume their dancing as if nothing has just happened, and maybe it hasn’t, not for them; for Tessa, it feels like her nerve endings are on fire, and the proximity of Scott is not doing her any favors. She’s suddenly dizzy from the spinning and from the moment, and she needs to get out of there before she does something she regrets, she needs to go back to her hotel room where none of this is happening, she needs to–

“Walk with me?” Scott says, offering a hand, which she takes without a moment of hesitation.

The spark that she feels when their fingers intertwine tells her this is a terrible idea, but the way he tugs at her arm erases any doubts left in her, so much that in a matter of minutes they are crashing against the door of her hotel room, her legs wrapped around his hips, his mouth kissing her lips and her jaw and her neck and then her lips again, his hands firmly grasping her ass in a way she knows he was trying to resist doing earlier. 

She is tugging at his shirt almost desperately in between the gasps he’s eliciting from her every time he sucks at that place just below her collarbone, and he stops for a moment to let her finally get rid of his shirt. His chest is full of little red marks where her nails had been digging earlier, and she finds herself excited in a childlike way at the sight of the marks she’d left on him.

They waste no time in discarding their clothes and then they are on the bed, naked and bare before one another, in a dance so intricate and so intimate that almost mirrors their earlier one; hips moving in sync, fingers tangled together, breaths mingling, foreheads pressed against each other’s, their bodies fused in a way that only dancing and making love has ever been able to achieve. Just like on the ice, just like on the dancefloor, on the bed it’s just them at their most primal and nothing else has ever mattered.

They reach their climax in the same way the music speeds up the beat slightly before the beginning of the end, erratic yet absolutely perfect, and they gasp each other’s name in the same breath as they reach the grand finale of their song.

**Author's Note:**

> I was born and raised in the bandom ages so I basically learned to read and write with M-rated Panic! at the Disco fanfiction, and yet I tried to resist writing these emotionally stunted Canadians for the longest time despite having no moral or ethical objection to RPF as a whole... but then this wouldn't leave my head and here we are, I guess. I'm sorry, mom, you raised me better than this.  
> If you've made it this far, I apologize. But they just pull you in, don't they?  
> Thank you to Shay for reading RPF for me, and to Madeline for being the person I go to whenever these two are being obnoxious.  
> Say hi on Twitter, I'm @proposalgate !


End file.
